Wind and wildfire mages.., p.10
Wind & Wildfire (Mages of the Wheel), page 10
“Who would have thought you had an affinity for the macabre?” He bent to pick a broken piece of mosaic tile off the floor. Dilay stole it from him and set it back down, even though it was clearly just detritus. It felt wrong to disturb anything here. As it felt wrong to disturb the ground where ashes were laid after someone died. This was a tomb, for a long-gone House of magic.
There were no books on destruction magic in the library. No one spoke of the mages. The hundreds upon thousands who had been murdered. Persecuted. Driven away.
“I needed a place free of distractions.” Dilay picked a drifting bit of cobweb out of the air. “This seemed the best place to go unnoticed.”
“If the Headmaster discovers you are teaching outside your classes, you will be banned.” Behram smiled helpfully, then gave the Vali Ahad a look that Dilay could not interpret in the dim light. She blew the cobweb away.
“I am aware. I hoped, since it was at his behest, that the Vali Ahad might be willing to put in a good word for me, were the occasion to arise that my integrity was questioned.” She looked at him sidelong, and the Vali Ahad tipped his head to one side in acquiescence.
“Shall we begin then?” He dismissed his men with a little flick of his fingers. The guards retreated back to the hall. Not exactly out of sight, but certainly out of the way. His steward found an ancient stone bench along the wall, gave it a fastidious dusting with his hand, then looked disdainfully at the dirt before he sat down.
Dilay flipped her bag open and pulled out three feathers she had stolen from the classroom. She was going to have to stop thinking of it as stealing, but it would never really feel like borrowing. Pushing boundaries and roles was fine, but blatantly breaking rules would always feel wrong.
“Where is the Sehzade?” Dilay asked. She had been thinking to use him in her assessment exercise. If she was going to help the Vali Ahad gain more control, she had to see how much he did, or did not, possess already.
“Entertaining a pack of young women with his comic genius,” Behram said, dryly. That earned him a chuckle from the Vali Ahad. “I saw him in the atrium when I came up.”
“Then you could assist?” she asked Behram.
Behram made a face of disdain. “I am not a teaching assistant.”
“Then at least make yourself somewhat useful and give us some light,” the prince grumbled. Behram ducked his head and snapped his fingers. Three mage orbs blinked into life and floated up and away from each other, casting pale, steady light as they rose.
Mage orbs were the first spell a fire mage learned, even the least gifted of the Fifth House could conjure them, though their strength and duration varied greatly from mage to mage. Conjuring and controlling multiples was a difficult task, but Behram had been able to do it from the moment his magic manifested. A prodigy, many of the instructors called him, despite the fact it had taken him much, much longer to summon his actual fire.
Dilay’s talent was control, giving her the ability to cast spells that far outstripped her power level because she did not waste a modicum of energy. But Behram, he was a master of intention. Another tenant of theory. Intention was the beating heart of a spell. Dilay often thought even more important than control.
If one could not narrow the focus of their intention, then power was wasted in a spell. It had unintended consequences, or veered off course. Dilay had never met another mage that had such an innate grasp of intention.
“Arrogant prick,” the Vali Ahad muttered. The walls echoed the utterance.
“I only thought to inspire your growth with my prowess, Efendim.” Behram gave a little bow.
“Inspiring is not a word I would use for you, my friend,” said the Vali Ahad.
“Perhaps I should leave you two to this…chest puffing?” Dilay suggested. “If I am not needed.” She did not have time to waste, but it did make her happy, and confused, to see Behram and the Vali Ahad exchanging friendly heckling. It pleased her to see Behram had that kind of relationship with anyone. There had been a time she had been his only friend. But this man? Who was known only for his ability to pry into the minds of others? What could they possibly have in common? Unless it was just their positions in society. Perhaps that was connection enough.
“No, please, Instructor Akar, I apologize.” The Vali Ahad faced her, clasping his hands behind his back. Dilay shot Behram a warning glance and he held his hands up, backing away to sit beside the steward. He could learn something from the Vali Ahad’s easy apology.
“I had meant to have you do this with the Sehzade, but as he is not here, I will have to do.” Dilay held the feathers out between them and looked up, into the soaring dome above. This was an exercise she often gave to her young air students in the Earth District. It allowed them to use some of their boundless energy and work on their magic simultaneously. She only had Aval in that class, for whom the act of controlling a feather and running about was the very upper limit of their capability. It would be interesting to see what the Vali Ahad, arguably one of the most powerful air mages in Tamar, could do.
She searched for a suitable place to serve as goal, and found one in an alcove on the balcony that circled the upper reaches of the dome. It was used to frame a mosaic, and had a little stone basin jutting from the wall, which might once have been a fountain.
Dilay pointed to it. “The first one to get two feathers into that wins the game.”
“A game?” The Vali Ahad scowled up at the alcove, then turned it on her. “I do not have time for games,” he said.
“I need to assess where we are starting, Efendim.” She shrugged, then held the feathers up in front of her face. “Besides, we learn best when we do not realize we are learning. And when we cannot cheat.” She blew on the feathers as she gave him a pointed look, casting magic into the air expelled from her lungs. They spiraled toward the roof. Had he never been given a game as a learning device? His displeasure continued as he watched them, then looked at her, clearly at a loss.
“You should stop scowling and start playing, my prince, or you will be bested in one breath,” Behram jeered. Dilay slipped a tendril of air around one feather and scooped it away from the others. This game was not for winning; she wanted to see how the Vali Ahad handled the task. The trick with feathers, she had discovered over endless marks of practice, was not to engage them directly. But to deny them a direction, thereby forcing them where one wanted them.
She had the first feather in the fountain before the Vali Ahad had even reached with his power for the other two. Dilay stole one away from him with a quick push of air, sacrificing the third as he directed it into the fountain. He used his hands, a habit of even the most practiced of Sival. It was not necessary, but a trick to emphasize their intention and focus.
Theoretically, a Sival needed only to focus mentally on the outcome they wanted, and the magic would do the rest; the most powerful and accomplished of mages did not even need to be looking at an object to apply their power to it. But most needed the direction of motion, of sight, and hearing or their other senses. Even those who did not need movement utilized it, to save energy and time.
Dilay played with the second feather, keeping it just out of his attempts to steal it from her, watching his face and body as he walked a circle around her. His head was tipped back so he could watch the feather, his brow knitted, jaw set. Energy wasted, but not an egregious amount. Dilay stood in the center of the room, only moving to keep him in sight.
She shifted her stream of air, sending the feather dipping toward the floor. The Vali Ahad lunged forward, toward her, commanding the feather back up with a palm angled toward the ceiling. He ended up in front of her, close enough to touch. The air he shifted had force, cutting through hers like it was gauze. And his control was good enough to direct with surety the feather when she was not fighting him for it.
As he made a bid to guide it into the fountain, Dilay stepped forward, closing the distance between them and spearing her own shaft of air through the middle of his. The feather spiraled wildly, and he spun to follow it with his gaze, trying to direct it out of her magic. Dilay followed him around, reaching across his chest to interrupt his magic again.
This time she got too close. He bent back to avoid the sweep of her arm, then stepped hurriedly away and dropped his arms to his sides. Red flashed in the peripheral of her vision as Behram surged to his feet.
“Don’t,” the Vali Ahad barked and Dilay stood rooted in her shock at the tone. He paused and swept a hand over his shorn hair. “Please do not touch me,” he said in a more reasonable tone. The feather drifted toward the floor, free of the guidance of their magic.
She glanced to Behram, who avoided her look as he sank back to the bench.
“Are we finished?” the prince said. Dilay lowered her hand, trying to maintain a neutral air despite her surprise and irritation. The Vali Ahad avoided her gaze.
Behram laughed, and the feather burst into flame, and was ash before Dilay blinked. She looked over at him. Behram had his arms folded over his chest, his head propped back against the wall, his eyes closed. She huffed in annoyance.
“I do not think the Vali Ahad understood your little test, Dilay.”
She strode to the bag she had left on the floor and picked it up, her pride still stinging. Behram’s dismissive laughter only made her feel sillier. As she slung the bag’s strap over her head, the Vali Ahad approached her.
“Forgive me, Instructor Akar, I—”
“You asked for my help, Efendim.” She tugged her braid loose from beneath the strap before she rounded on him. With a cold smile she patched together her pride and ignored her confusion. “Do not worry. I have no need to touch you to conduct these lessons. Nor can I ever imagine having the desire.” She turned on her heel. Behram popped to his feet and fell in stride beside her.
“Instructor Akar.” The Vali Ahad’s resonant voice was not held back now, though she could not tell if that was anger or simply disbelief at her abruptness.
Dilay stopped, turned, and bowed as a peace offering. “Tomorrow, here, the same time.” Dilay glanced to Behram as she turned and walked away, wishing she could outpace him as well. She was embarrassed, and that always felt like a weakness when she was around him. Something he could attribute to her trying so hard to be something she was not. Their few, short interactions had not suggested that the Vali Ahad was a man like Behram. That he was not so caught up on station as to be offended by the touch of someone lower born than him.
So, what was he afraid of, exactly? Perhaps the rumors. Though that seemed a stretch considering he had chosen her to help and met her in secret. Her irritation settled into curiosity. A puzzle to be solved.
Behram’s uncharacteristic silence drew her attention out of her thoughts and to him. For a moment she considered asking why he wore such a brooding look but decided against it. She did not have patience to deal with his mood as well as her own.
Wheel help her, men were exhausting.
Eleven
“FATHER,” MAZHAR SAID, THOUGH HIS gaze was locked with Omar’s, “please consider his health. You push him too far.” Mazhar had their mother’s soft heart, her concern for Omar’s welfare. Omar had always been, by necessity, more pragmatic. He was the heir, and more tool than person.
He was not pleased to be spoken around as if he were not in the room, but this fight between his brother and his father was not a new one, neither was it productive. The Sultan was not a Veritor, and though he was a Sival, the highest order of mage alive, he possessed only the First House’s more mundane powers. Sound and the manipulation of air in the space around him. Omar, like his father’s now-dead brother, could dig mental fingers into the mind of another and pry it open for its secrets. The price he paid for that power was pain.
He would be lucky if headaches continued to be the only effects of his youth being used as judge and jury. The occasional whispers in the back of his mind suggested otherwise. But his father would not be swayed. Omar’s uncle had not suffered ill effects from using his Veritor magic. The fact that he had died young of the consumption did not seem especially relevant to their father. Nor had he been as sensitive to the power as Omar had proved to be, at least by his father’s account. The Sultan was rooted into his belief that Omar was affecting any ill effects in order to weasel his way out of conducting any more “confessions.” He considered it an affliction of laziness. Perhaps it was. Omar could not say for certain that his hatred of the task, of the magic, did not manifest as the pain that plagued him. Repulsion so deeply rooted it could masquerade as real aftereffects.
Their father believed using Omar’s Veritor magic was the best way to dig evil out of the city at its root. That knowing there was no way to lie one’s way out of court would stop crime before it started. There was no turning him from the notion. No matter how many alternatives Omar studied, in between the headaches that denied him the ability to read or concentrate, or the voices that whispered in the back of his mind sometimes. His father did not believe in looking anywhere but tradition for answers, and he had a great deal of support in his High Council for that notion.
Omar could understand, to an extent. The traditions of the Old Sultanate had made it a power in the world. But Tamar’s past was also bloody, filled with atrocities some thought better forgotten than examined.
“Mazhar,” Omar chided. Mazhar turned his back on both Omar and their father with a noise of irritation. Their mother sat quietly in her chair, staring out into the garden. She had fought, countless times. Omar knew it because he could hear it all the way down the hall in his own rooms. But she never did so in front of anyone else. Embarrassing the Sultan publicly was the surest way to make certain he dug into his opinions, never to be swayed at all. Mazhar liked to address these fights head-on, bluntly. But their mother, she fought a war of attrition. Omar did not know if she would win it before it did not matter to him anymore. Before the headaches split his skull open, or he performed a confession when he was too tired and killed himself and the other person.
“I have answered these doubts before,” the Sultan said. “He will condition himself to the level that is demanded. As with any magic. You must work on your stamina. And if your interest in the University is affecting you—”
“It is not, Efendim,” Omar said. “I can continue my duties at the palace as you see fit.”
His father rose from his chair, and the servants in the room scurried to open the door to the hall. “Very well.”
“I am grateful for your indulgence, Sultanim.” Omar bowed. Mazhar did the same, and they remained so as their father bent over the back of their mother’s chair and kissed her cheek, then left the suite of rooms.
As the doors shut, their mother glanced at her lady in waiting, Beste. The woman bowed at the silent command then made a quick gesture with her hands. Silence blanketed the room, muffling everything for a moment before Omar’s ears adjusted to the dampening. The Queen Sultana took up a more relaxed pose in her chair. She smiled a secret smile at Mazhar and Omar.
Omar dropped onto one of the couches as if he were a puppet with its strings cut.
“Tell me about the University.”
“I enjoy it. Though I do not know how he can,” Mazhar said. He sat on the couch beside Omar. “With headaches that prevent him concentrating.”
Omar shot him a look that commanded silence but it was too late.
“And have you found someone who seems suitable to assist you?” Her tone indicated she already knew the answer. Omar pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, nodding. It felt like defeat. His mother wanted him to pretend his magic did not exist. They had never outright fought over it, but her disapproval and his desperation often clashed in silent stares between them, as it did now.
“An apprentice instructor. A woman,” Mazhar said. And while Omar was certain that his mother would be very intrigued by the idea of a female instructor at the University, he had the strangest, anxious desire to keep anything and everything to do with Dilay to himself. He did not wish to bring it out and speak about it with anyone, examine it too closely, look at it directly. He was very afraid of what he would see. When he had offered her the palace library as payment for her help, her eyes had burned like dark suns. And he had realized how desperately he wanted people like that, who wanted knowledge, who wanted change…people like her, around him. How isolated and repressed he felt. Conforming, bending to his father’s will, contorting himself into the man his father thought he should be. But she…she was exactly who she wanted to be and it did not matter that it did not fit into a mold others had made for her. And he wanted that same thing so badly that he could taste it, like too much salt blistering the inside of his mouth. Looking at her was like looking at his own, true self standing outside his body.
“A woman? How extraordinary.” His mother gave him a sly smile that did not normally make him sick to his stomach. But today it did. “She must be most sympathetic to you, then.”
“I have not had the impression that she is a particularly sympathetic person,” Omar said. He had been kicking himself all night and morning for overreacting to her movements. She had been so insulted. That was the last thing he needed. Today he would not allow anyone in with them except Ruslan. So he could apologize.
His mother’s sharp black eyebrow rose. “Oh? A woman of intelligence and backbone. How delightful. And is she pretty?”
“What does that have to do with her qualifications—”
“Pretty enough to put Behram Kadir upside down. He is nice to her,” Mazhar said as if it were the greatest of scandals. The feeling that Omar did not want to feel scratched harder, and he was suddenly irritable. “And smart enough to help Omar with his problem.” His mother’s smile lost its joy at Mazhar’s latter statement.
“I see,” she said, carefully, her dark gaze fixed on Omar’s. He did not like what her expression told him she saw on his own face.
“We should go.” He stood. “Because Instructor Akar is, in fact, not sympathetic at all, and if I am late to meet her I have no doubt she will terminate our agreement.”
